


Save Your Heart

by lazarus_girl



Series: Saudade Series [7]
Category: Skins (UK), The Fades
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:50:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> "They don’t talk about what’s been left behind."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Set post series finale of _The Fades_. Written for [15genres1prompt](http://15genres1prompt.livejournal.com). Genre: Crossover. Prompt: Lost. Inspired by the Florence + the Machine song [’Seven Devils’](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBcXe2B97TQ). Thank you to [@cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com/) for her beta skills and cheerleading.

Until a few months ago, the only dead thing Anna Roberts had ever seen was her cat, Charlie, but now she’s seen a lot more death. Charlie was old, and sick, and they were prepared for it. He was buried in the garden in a tiny coffin that Paul and Mac made together; painted up and filled with all of Charlie’s favourite things, like an Egyptian tomb. Nothing could’ve prepared her for any of this. Nothing prepared her for the way Paul looked when he told her about Jay – her best friend in the whole world, not that Anna thinks she ever really knew that – and how he had to leave her there on the pavement, like she meant nothing when she really meant everything. There was no burial.

It’s still raw. They don’t talk about Jay. They don’t talk about their mum or Mac’s dad. They don’t talk about what’s been left behind. They don’t talk about a lot of things.

All that matters is there’s distance between them and everyone else. She’s lost count of the places they’ve driven through now; her, Paul, and Mac in a stolen Ford Fiesta they don’t really know how to drive because they’ve only had a handful of lessons between them. She’s surprised they haven’t turned the thing over by now, but given that Paul’s already come back from the dead once, anything seems possible. All except normality. Whatever normal is when you’ve got a twin brother with untold powers who’s the Savoir of the human race, and everyone you’ve come across is dead, dying or has already crossed over to become a Fade. She doesn’t know which is worse.

Normal doesn’t exist. Normal can’t exist. Not now. Her life before is gone. A line’s been drawn. They can’t go back, no matter how much they’d like to. So, they just go forward, clinging to each other. Still, she can’t help but wish for everything she took for granted. Sometimes it’s faint wishing, and the wanting disappears quickly, like smoke, but other times, she wishes hard, and the pain of not being able to realise it lingers; gnawing away at her so she can’t sleep. She wants shitty Sixth-Form, coursework, and Mr Etches moaning about deadlines. She wants her mum dragging her round Tescos on a Saturday morning, asking her stupid questions about Steve and driving her fucking mad. She wants Sundays with Jay, watching those random French films she liked so much. She wants that more than anything.

She thinks about Charlie now, as they pass the sign for Bristol. The further they go, the less hopeful they are of finding any more Angelics, or failing that, anyone alive. Charlie was the last remnant of their father, bought from the pet shop one Saturday when they were six years old. Back then, she and Paul were inseparable, and they made every choice together. Choices got taken out of her hands shortly after they got Charlie, and their father left for the first time.

“We’re lost,” Mac announces, turning a crumpled map in his hands.

“I don’t think we can be lost if we have no real idea of where we’re going, can we?” Paul remarks, irritated, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Can we stop?” she asks, before she’s realised, and Paul and Mac share a look, and the car’s silent until the wipers flick across the windscreen, barely fast enough to clear the neverending rainfall.

“We could, I suppose,” Paul glances up at her, and she looks at his reflection in the rearview mirror.

His eyes look tired. He’s been driving too long today, but he won’t let either of them take over. She knows why, it’s because nowhere is really safe, not anymore, and if he loses them, he’s got nothing left to fight for. They’ve come close. They carry scars, and have the smashed in back window covered over with plastic from their drive through Birmingham to show for it. They carry guns now, wedged in pockets or tucked into their belts like people in films. She knows how to use it, _has_ needed to use it. She doesn’t flinch now. The recoil doesn’t jolt her with the force it once did. Her arm is steady, her aim is straight, and she more than holds her own.

It just shows how surreal things have become; like she’s watching someone else’s life playing out before her. Her tolerance for what’s ordinary and what’s out of the ordinary, for what’s right and what’s wrong has altered. The finite lines between those states have blurred, have shifted somehow and become fluid without her notice.

***

The three of them walk together, Paul leading them onwards as they as they take everything. It’s bleak. Hands in pockets, with their hoods up, they’re shivering against the cold. The rain and the wind still battering down as relentlessly as it ever has. She can’t remember the last time there was a sunny day. Part of her hoped – expected – that Bristol would be the same, with Cabot Circus exactly as it was when she came shopping with her auntie Lindsay in the summer before secondary school, that somehow, they’d eventually come to a city that was completely unaffected. Mac told them that the law of averages meant there had to be somewhere like that, but she doesn’t think that’s possible. It’s not possible in Bristol, anyway.

Like everywhere else they’ve been, it’s deserted. Cars are parked haphazardly, with their doors still open. Shops have been looted for anything of use long ago, windows and doors smashed in and shelves striped bare. There’s glass and rubbish everywhere, overflowing from the bins, but that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is the pervading acrid smell in the air, like smoke, or something much worse that none of them want to acknowledge, even if the evidence of it is all around them, and they have to change their path, stepping over or around some other poor soul they weren’t fast enough to save.

“We’re too late,” Paul says, solemnly, with a shake of his head.

“We don’t know that,” she offers, trying desperately to be optimistic, because someone has to.

“She’s right,” Mac counters, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I mean, there could be any number of people here, just hiding, trying to protect themselves, like us.” The longer he goes on, the less confident he sounds.

They turn the corner and peer into a darkened alleyway. Paul’s about to turn away and go off in another direction when she hears something.

“Paul,” she calls, but he doesn’t respond. “Paul!” she repeats, cupping her hands to make her voice louder, “I can hear something!”

“Yeah,” he says, marching back to her, annoyed, “And so will everyone else in a ten-mile radius if you keep talking that loudly!”

“How else are we supposed to talk to each other?” Mac asks, and Paul just shakes his head.

“Shut up!” she hisses, pushing him the chest as she strains to hear.

Sure enough, the sound comes again. It’s a small, weary, desperate sound that she can’t quite decipher until they all move a little closer, inching forward with careful steps, on the lookout. Someone’s calling out a name or calling for help, but it’s definitely a person.

“It might be a trap,” Paul whispers, and she nods, because it wouldn’t be the first time.

In her peripheral vision, she sees Paul reach behind his back, and she knows his hand is grasping for his gun, wary. Mac looks over at her, and does exactly the same thing, reaching for the gun on his hip. He’s less confident, and she can see his hand shaking as it hovers over the makeshift holster.

***

There, in front of them, huddled against a wall in the corner between a wheelie bin and a metal fence, is a girl. A human, and not a Fade, just like them. She’s badly injured, bleeding heavily from a wound on her stomach. It doesn’t look like she has long left at all. That’s something else Anna’s become good at, sensing how long people can survive.

“I didn’t think that anyone could possibly… ” Paul tails off, kneeling down in front of her.

“Me either, mate,” Mac breathes, dropping down next to him and studying her carefully.

The girl opens her eyes, and they all jump. Anna sees a flicker of recognition in them, deep, dark, and magnetic, pulling her in. She steps back, cautious, because it reminds her a little of John and the strange pull she felt when he was near, except, this is different, it’s not like a threat at all.

“Naomi?” the girl says, pained and desperate, looking her right in the eyes.

Mac turns to her, puzzled, mouthing a ‘what?’ at her.

“I’ve never seen her before in my fucking life!” she exclaims, shaking her head in disbelief, because try as she might, there’s nothing coming to her.

“Naomi, my beautiful Naomi,” the girl says, a tear rolling down her cheek.

Paul scoots forward, and she finds herself moving too. “That’s my sister, that’s Anna.”

She can’t find it in her to be afraid, even after everything they’ve seen. There’s something about this girl, something good, kind, real, and honest that she can’t shake. She reminds her of Jay.

“Paul,” Mac begins, gently, turning away from the girl, “I don’t think we should be telling her things, in fact, I don’t think we should be _doing_ anything.”

She drops to her knees on the girl’s right side, squeezing herself in the small space between her and the fence.

“I knew you’d come back, babe,” the girl swallows, struggling to breathe, and reaches for her hand. No one’s ever looked at her with such adoration. Something in her chest shifts.

“Who would?” she asks, letting the girl take it, without really knowing why.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me again …” the girl says, eyes drifting closed, and they all look at each other, confused.

Then, Paul reaches forward, and she sees something clutched tight in the girl’s free hand. He takes it from her as gently as possible. It’s a photograph, folded in half, torn on the one edge.

“What the fuck?!”

She snaps her head up, because she can count the number of times he’s sworn on her hand. The colour has drained from his face.

“Bloody hell!” Mac exclaims, leaning over looking between her, the picture and back again, eyes growing wide.

“What?!”

“The girl, the girl in the picture …”

Mac overlaps, finishing for him, “She looks just like you.”

Hands shaking, Paul turns it towards her, and she drops the girl’s hand, snatching it from him. There’s a very different version of the girl in front of her, tanned and in sunglasses, smiling for the camera, against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. Next to her, smiling just as wide, is a girl who could be her double. Suddenly, it all falls in to place. That’s who this poor girl was talking about, Naomi her girlfriend, she’s gotten them confused. She flips over the photo, wiping away the blood with her jacket sleeve, revealing a caption written in neat capital letters, reading it aloud to the others.

“Naomi and Emily, Arambol Beach, Goa 2010,” she glances at the girl, seeing her eyes drift open again. “Emily, is your name Emily?”

There’s another spark of recognition and the faintest trace of lucidity when she nods slowly. It’s Paul’s hand on her shoulder this time, and she has to look away, because it’s too much and now she’s well and truly freaked out.

***

She puts her jacket around Emily, and tries to keep pressure on the wound not caring about the blood; even though she knows it’s futile. The pain must be terrible. She hates to think of her mum or her auntie or anyone else she loves suffering like this. The only comfort she can take from Jay’s death is that it was quick, and she didn’t have to endure anything like this; the life slowly ebbing away from her, moment by moment.

Paul and Mac are standing opposite them, near another wheelie bin, talking in the loudest whispers she’s ever heard, arguing about what to do next.

“We can’t take her, Paul,” Mac protests.

“We can’t just leave her here to die either. We’re not!”

They glare at each other, and Jay’s name goes unsaid.

“She can barely move, Paul, it’s not fair,” he glances over at her, as if to draw her into the conversation, but she can’t think of anything to say.

“If we leave her here, they’ll find her, you know that.”

“Yeah,” he hisses, “and if we stay here, they’ll find us and then we’ll all be fucked!”

He doesn’t mean to be cruel, she knows, even if it sounds that way, but Mac’s the practical one, the voice of reason, except, reason went out the window a long time ago.

“Anna, come on, help me,” Paul says, pushing past Mac and ignoring him completely.

He takes off his scarf and packs it inside the wound with her help. She soothes Emily with shushes every time she cries out in pain. Once, she would’ve turned away, repulsed, but now, it’s something she’s used to, cleaning wounds, dressing them, keeping them all going, remembering little bits her mum taught her and stuff from school and Brownies.

“Can’t you fix her, Paul?” she asks, because it seems so cruel.

“No,” he sighs. “I wish I could. I’ve tried before, it never works.”

“Try again,” she pleads.

Mac mutters away to himself pacing back and forth, “This is just wrong.”

They struggle to get her up to standing, one arm around each of their shoulders, and it’s lucky she’s so small, else they’d have no hope. Emily whines, this horrible, high whining noise. It reminds her of when next door’s dog when it got run over last July. She shudders.

Mac blocks their path, “She’s de –”

“What? Dead weight? Someone somewhere cares about her, Mac. If she has to die, she shouldn’t have to die alone!” she says, getting louder and angrier as she progresses.

Paul glances at her, surprised, as if she took the words right out of his mouth. He hasn’t looked at her that way in a long time.

It’s slow progress, getting back to the car, and she knows every step is torture for Emily, but between the three of them, they make it back. She climbs into the backseat first, sitting in the furthest seat so Paul and Mac have enough room to lift Emily gently inside.

“Be fucking careful!” she exclaims, when Emily cries out.

“You’re alright, it’s alright,” Mac assures, and it’s clear he’s had a change of heart. They share a look, and he just nods. It feels important and she doesn’t really know why.

She rests Emily’s head in her lap, keeping pressure on her wound, it’s uncomfortable, at first, being this close to, feeling this close to, someone she barely knows, and she’s not very good at dealing with people’s feelings either. Looking down at her, she brushes the hair out of her face, wondering how many times Naomi did the same thing. Emily opens her eyes again, smiling at her, and she feels that same surge of feeling in her chest as before.

“You’re safe now,” she says, gently, even though feels like a half truth. “I’m here.”

***

They make a plan, resolving to head for the coast in the hope of finding more people, but they all know that it’s really about giving Emily a better place to die than a dirty, rat-infested alley. It’s about righting a wrong. Somehow, Emily’s come to represent everyone they’ve lost.

“What do you think happened to her?” Mac asks, stopping even though there are no other cars and the traffic lights are broken.

“Who?”

Paul turns round to look at her, and the penny drops.

“Oh,” she says, sadly, and glances down at Emily again.

As the day rain starts to ease off, and the day give way to night, they start to theorise then, about how long Emily’s been there, and consider that they were probably separated somehow, either when Emily got injured and Naomi went to find help or they were attacked. They all conclude, with a startling ease, that Naomi’s probably dead, or has been captured by the Fades. The car descends into silence as they each fall into their own thoughts, and the only thing keeping her mind tethered to the present is Emily, and keeping steady pressure on that wound. Paul’s scarf is almost soaked through, and the signs for the coast still have frighteningly high numbers.

Emily calls for Naomi again, face contorting in pain, and it’s then that she decides to play along, keep her talking and let her think she really is Naomi. Given the circumstances, it’s the best and the kindest thing she can do for her.

***

They’ve been travelling for hours or maybe it’s days? Either way, she’s not really sure. Everything’s a blur. Emily drifting in an out of consciousness. She gets snatches of conversation about Naomi, memories perhaps, or just Emily’s mind playing tricks. She just listens, and strokes Emily’s hair, in the hope of comforting her.

It’s colder now, with the sea air and the night breeze, but it’s surprisingly tranquil too, now they’re out of the confines of the cramped car. The four of them are together. Emily in her lap, leant against her, while Mac and Paul flank her either side. It feels like they’re the only people left in the world. Maybe they are. Maybe they always have been.

Paul looks off into the distance at the sea, watching the waves, and she touches his hand. He doesn’t say anything, but his lips curve into a small smile, and he seems briefly comforted. It’s short-lived though, he’s soon pensive again, his mind obviously turning things over. They’re just waiting for the inevitable.

Emily’s feverish now, less and less coherent, and she fights not to cry as Mac tends the fire he’s made, cooking the last of the food they have, even though he knows no one will eat any. Then, he takes off his jacket and puts it around her shoulders. She doesn’t dare comment. They’re past the stage where she bitches at him for no reason, and when he’s not talking incessantly about Star Trek, Star Wars, or anything related to stars for that matter, he’s actually a nice guy.

“I’m so glad we found each other Naomi,” Emily says, in a weak, broken little voice.

“Me too,” she replies, stroking Emily’s hair idly. It’s a habit now.

“You’re the …only … person I’ve ever loved.”

She tilts her head away at that, not sure how to respond, feeling tears prick at the back of her eyes. It pains her to listen, because it’s getting harder for Emily to speak. That, and no one’s ever told her something like that before. She’s never been loved like Naomi has, and she feels a weird pang of jealousy, but it’s gone as quick as it came, and she feels terrible, because she has no business feeling that way. The poor girl’s probably lying dead somewhere, with no one to care about her at all.

***

Mac and Paul have fallen asleep now, and though she’s fighting it, she forces herself to stay awake for Emily, listening to her breathing get shallower and shallower as she struggles. If it was cruel before, it’s downright torturous now, and she’s debating waking the others up to ask if they should shoot her, if only to end her misery. If she were an animal, they’d give her an injection, like the vet did for Charlie.

It doesn’t seem fair for Emily to suffer, this obviously dear, sweet girl, when all she’s done in her life is be a mean, horrible, selfish bitch. She likes keeping the world at arm’s length, it’s easier, and it means she has less chance of being hurt. Usually, it means that everyone else _but_ her gets hurt, because she’s the one who does the hurting; quick insults that cut deep or moments of thoughtlessness that make her look immature and spiteful. Everyone’s used to her that way, she’s had no real reason to behave differently, until she realised that if she carried on doing that to Paul and Mac, she’d end up well and truly alone, and there’s no way she could survive without them.

***

Just before sunrise – the sky shot through an unforgettable, beautiful shade of orange-red – Emily calls for Naomi once more, and she listens for the low rattling sound that accompanies Emily’s breath, but there isn’t another. She’s gone.

Paul’s the first to wake up when he hears her crying, and then Mac, who storms off as soon as he realises what’s happened. They hear his pained, almost primal cry from where they are, even though he’s just a tiny figure in the distance. For all the death they’ve seen, they’re still no better at dealing with it. She hopes it’s a good thing. It means they haven’t totally lost the thing that makes them human; the only thing that separates them from people like John. It’s a delicate, thread-fine distinction.

She can’t keep it in any longer, and backs away from Emily, breaking down completely. Paul says nothing, and just pulls her close, hugging her for a long time. They both sit with Emily, laid out on the sand, and she brushes a hand over Emily’s face to close her eyes. She doesn’t know why, but she places a gentle kiss on her forehead, because it feels like something Naomi would do.

Emily looks completely at peace, and she’s glad for that, but nothing else.

“It’s not fair,” she croaks.

“I know, I know,” Paul says, rocking her a little.

There’s only six minutes of difference between them, but she’s never felt younger than she does now, sobbing into the sleeve of Paul’s coat for a girl she barely knew.

***

They build a makeshift raft from driftwood, and place Emily carefully on it. She looks at the picture one last time, taking in their happy faces, wondering what they were like together, and the life they had. It’s too much. She wipes away a tear, and tucks the picture underneath Emily’s folded palms. They stand with her, waist deep in water, ignoring the cold.

“We should say something,” she declares, “It doesn’t feel right.”

“We’ve never been to anyone’s funeral.”

She glances at Paul, because he hasn’t referred to them as a ‘we’ for years. “I’ve only seen stuff on the telly,” she turns to Mac, “What about you?”

“I erm, I know something,” he replies quietly.

She nods solemnly, and Mac takes a moment to compose himself, clearing his throat before he speaks again.

“Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace, both now and evermore. Amen.”

At the 'amen,' she and Paul join in, and she swallows hard, fighting tears. With that, they let go of their raft, and Emily slowly drifts away.

Paul and Mac come back to her side, hugging her close. Mac kisses her cheek, and she doesn’t comment or turn away. The three of them stay there, watching the raft get smaller and smaller, knowing that their chances of finding someone else alive are getting smaller and smaller too.

She’s never felt more alone in her life.


End file.
